Thanks for the memories

I can be so sentimental.  I used to save nearly every paper my children brought home from school.  Their baby books became baby boxes and finally big covered crates that wouldn’t even fit under the bed!

I think I have over fifty thick photo albums full of pictures I took so I wouldn’t forget a thing!  Pictures of my children when they were smaller and pictures of my mother before she died and my father and all kinds of other photos to keep me from forgetting even one detail of precious moments.

I have a little macaroni angel my son made for our Christmas tree when he was seven.  It is my most prized ornament and if it broke I could never hope to replace it.

I have elegant dishes given to me by one person or another to commemorate a special occasion and I know the story behind each one.

I have turtles collected all over the world that remind me of special people and special moments and special places.

There was a time in my life when losing any of these would have broken my heart.  It was as if the people themselves were wrapped up in these “things.”

Now the only one I have is the tiny macaroni angel and he is so fragile it wouldn’t take much to break him.  Everything else has been left behind somewhere and I know the day may come when that tiny bit of dried and painted pasta may crumble too.

Only now I realize that they are just signs pointing to memories and the memories will always be there no matter what happens to anything else.  In fact, the memories are actually much more detailed than the thing I kept to remind me of them.

And they seem to pop up just when I need them no matter where I am.